Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a food and beverage container, and more particularly relates to a beverage container with a container lid, which provides a spill proof ability to prevent any beverage leak especially when the disposable container is tipped.
Description of Related Arts
In modern society, with lifestyle changing, hot drinks become popular among people. Everyone has the experience of drinking hot drinks in the leisure afternoon, when walking, shopping or chatting with friends. A hot drink not only can quench one's thirst, but also is good for stomach.
But as the popularity of the hot drinks, followed with the problems of hot drink containers and container lids. Conventionally, people use a container for hot drinks, such as a cup, then use a container lid to cover the opening. A conventional disposable lid of a disposable beverage cup on the current market, which is usually made of plastic, typically has a drinking hole arranged for a user to drink the beverage in the disposable beverage cup, and a vent hole that allows air venting into the disposable beverage cup therethrough for maintaining the balance of the pressure between the inside and outside of the disposable beverage cup. In other words, the air vent is set to maintaining the balance of the pressure between the inside and outside of the container, preventing the high inside pressure to burst. However, the conventional lid has several drawbacks.
A major drawback of the conventional lid is that the conventional lid provides a relatively weak sealing and leak proof ability. In other words, the disposable beverage cup with the conventional lid is inconvenient for carrying. Most of lids in the current market have exposed drinking holes and vent holes.
Since the size of the drinking hole is larger than the size of vent hole, the beverage in the disposable beverage cup will be spilled out through the drinking hole when the disposable beverage cup is tipped. Accordingly, the beverage in the disposable beverage cup may be spilled onto a table, a floor, clothes, file documents, or inside a car, resulting in unnecessary trouble and loss. Worse yet, if the beverage is hot, consumer may get seriously burnt.
The drinking hole allows people to drink the beverage inside the container. People can directly drink from the drinking hole, or by using a straw through the drinking hole. In either way, the drinking hole cover needs to be removed. The closure material usually is disposable, once removed cannot be closed again. If people want to take away the remaining half of the beverage, the beverage will leak from the drinking hole. Moreover, once the container is tilted or put upside down, liquid would leak from the air vent, scalding people and staining items, which is inconvenient to carry. Thus, the conventional design of container lids is not suitable to take away. An improved lid may further comprise a valve only provided at the drinking hole. However, the structure of the valve is complicated which will highly increase the manufacturing cost of the lid. In fact, none of the existing lid provides any seal to seal the vent hole of the lid.
Another problem is that the conventional containers for hot drinks are usually plastic, which can be used to contain coffee, juice or other hot beverages. However, with high temperature of the hot beverages, when the container is covered with container lid, the expanded internal air will rip off the container lid and apart the lid and the container. Sometimes one user need to repeatedly seal the container, which in inconvenient.
Furthermore, since the consumer must pay more attention on carefully holding the disposable beverage cup, he or she may loss focus on other things, which may cause potential hazard. For example, when the consumer carefully holds the disposable beverage cup during driving, he or she may loss focus on driving which may cause accident. Since the beverage is easy to leak out, some people may even pour out the beverage onto a road, or discard the disposable beverage cup onto a green area aside a road or a lawn of a front yard of a house and polluting our environment.
In order to make hot drinks container easy to carry, an improvement of conventional container and container lid are urgently needed to prevent beverages from leaking.
Another solution found in some fast-food restaurants or beverage shops is to provide a beverage tray which is made of cardboard for retaining the disposable beverage cup at the upright position. A beverage tray can typically hold four to six disposable beverage cups. It will be a waste when the customer only buys one or two disposable beverage cups but the seller still has to supply an oversized tray. It will increase the cost and produce additional trashes and possibly environment pollution.
In addition, after a customer choosing hot drinks, shop staff such as a barista or a cashier will get the hot drinks and seal the cup using a cup lid with their hands to prevent drinks from spilling out and to make it easier for customer to drink. In the process that the staff sealing the cup with the cup lid, their hands will directly touch the drinking hole on the lid and area around. And this action will bring bacteria to the drinking hole. When customers using the drinking hole to drink hot drinks, it is inevitably their mouths will in contact with the drinking hole or the area around the drinking hole. Thus, bacteria will be drank together with beverage, which is insanitary and could be dangerous to customers. The staff keeps repeat receiving money, looking for changes, where the money and changes are contaminated with a lot of bacteria and viruses, eventually the staff will inadvertently transmit these bacteria and viruses to different customers which can lead to cross-infection and disease. This is a public health and safety issue needed to be solved.